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WASHINGTON— Following military successes earlier this year against jihadist fighters, an ethnic Kurdish militia that has been carving out a de facto Kurdish state in northeastern Syria is now facing a renewed challenge from a powerful al-Qaida offshoot.

In a sign of growing aggression against the Kurds, the Islamic State of Iraq and Levant known as ISIS, which was disowned earlier this year by the al-Qaida leadership, has launched an offensive against Syrian Kurds, both in the far northeast adjacent to the borders with Iraq and Turkey, and in Kurdish areas in Aleppo province.

The PYD, an affiliate of the Turkish Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), a separatist movement that has battled the Turkish government for Kurdish autonomy for three decades, scored a series of victories over jihadist rebel groups last autumn and during the winter.

Those successes emboldened its leaders to declare self-rule in an area in the northeast that Kurds call Rojeva. The PYD is the largest and best organized of 17 major Kurdish political factions.

But just days ago, ISIS fighters abducted 193 Kurds, mainly teenagers and students, from the village of Al Qbasin northeast of Aleppo.

And on May 29 jihadists killed 15 Kurds, including seven children, in an attack on a village near the largely Kurdish town of Ras al-Ain on the Turkish border, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a London-based pro-opposition group that relies on a network of activists on the ground for its information.

Oil at the root of the fight

The months-long struggle between the Kurds and jihadist rebel groups has been one of the hardest fought in the various regional and ethnic conflicts that the Syrian civil war to a large extent has evolved into.

The PYD and its allies spurned joining the rebel uprising against Mr. Assad, arguing that the mainly Sunni Muslim rebels rejected Kurdish aspirations for a post-Assad semi-autonomous state in northeast Syria.

“The jihadists have mounted several attacks in recent weeks,” Kurdish activist Kovan Direj told VOA in a phone interview. He said the PYD is on the defensive.

“The PYD has been halted and is now being forced to focus on defending its territory,” he says in the oil-rich Hasakah province and the neighboring province of Qamishli.

According to Wladimir van Wilgenburg of the Jamestown Foundation, a Washington-based research group, much of the overall importance of the fight between ISIS and the Kurds rests with control of the oil wells in the northeast and east of Syria.

“The Kurds control about 60 percent of Syria’s oil,” he says. Selling the oil is lucrative and any group that controls the wells can use the money to buy weapons and secure the support of local tribes. For ISIS the money that could be made from seizing more wells could make or break the jihadi group in its fight with mainstream rebel militias.

Growing threats from Damascus

Syria’s Kurds are also facing renewed challenges from Syrian forces.

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad withdrew most of his forces from much of Syria’s Kurdistan early in the civil war to focus on the uprising against his rule elsewhere.

The absence of fighting between Syrian army units that remained in the northeast and breakaway Kurds prompted other rebels to charge that the Kurds were either in league with the Syrian government or indirectly helping the regime by failing to join the rebellion.

PYD leaders dismiss the claims.

“The Assad regime knows we are strong, so it chooses not to attack us now,” Giwan Ibrahim, one of the Kurds’ top military commanders told VOA earlier this year. “And we choose not to attack Assad now, despite the fact that he is not our friend.”

But in recent weeks there have been clashes between Syrian and Kurdish units – a sign, some analysts argue, of the Assad government’s burgeoning confidence that the war is running now in its favor.

And there were increased tensions between Syrian soldiers and Kurdish militiamen in the run-up to the recent presidential election when Kurdish leaders refused to allow voting to take place in many of the towns they control in northeast Syria.

The Kurdish-controlled region in Syria’s northeast is surrounded on all sides. Jihadists, radical Islamists, and moderate rebel militias control territory to the west.

To the south are more jihadists. And in the Kurds’ midst, Syrian soldiers, who control about 20 percent of the city of Qamishli, remain.

Much of the fighting between the jihadists and Kurds is centered on strategic towns along the border with Turkey and Iraq.

Last month, the jihadists ordered Kurdish families in some villages in Raqqa province to leave their homes.

In recent months the biggest fear of PYD commanders has been that if Assad continues to make military advances against the rebellion and succeeds in capturing the half of the city of Aleppo held by the rebels, he may be tempted to move on them.

But Kurdish activists say for now the renewed jihadist offensive is what is now preoccupying them.

Afghan officials and human rights organizations assert that Pakistani authorities are using deadly attack at school in Peshawar as pretext to push out Afghan refugees More

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Comments

by: Anonymous

July 04, 2014 7:04 AM

Without liberating Tel Abyad, Jarablus, Azaz and Jabal al-Akrad, Kurdistan remains vulnerable. We ask international community to help Kurds achieving this goal by direct or indirect military assistance.

by: Joseph Zrnchik from: Highland, IN

June 07, 2014 9:47 PM

So the Kurds can have autonomy but the Crimean Russians can not? Why? If I were Assad I would arm the Kurds in Syria, Iraq and Turkey and have them kill every jihadist they can find. Assad and Hezbollah would have nothing to fear and Turkey, for all its Syrian meddling, would finally reap what it has been sowing.

In Response

by: ax

June 09, 2014 1:46 PM

Well, I thought Crimea was an autonomous region of Ukraine already...

In Response

by: Saladin

June 09, 2014 4:10 AM

Dit you get killed About 100 years. Dont compare kurds whit krim russians.Putin is helping you. But who is helping kurds. Only kurds are Support kurds.

by: Azad Dewani from: United Kingdom

June 07, 2014 2:05 PM

Kurds have proven that they are the strongest united secular group that seek regime change and the establishment of secular democracy. In addition, Kurds disfavor political Islam and well organized to fight against the strongest Jihadist groups including AlQaeda groups and other Islamist groups such as Muslim brotherhood armed wing of Liwa’a Al-Tawheed. In addition, Kurds always expressed that they favor peace with Israel and strong relations with the West. However, the US administration kept Kurds out its contacts although it contacted the Islamist groups directly or indirectly through the umbrella of Syrian opposition. By alienating Kurds, the US administration supports only the Turkish nationalist security agendas which reject any kind of Kurdish self-rule. One day the US administration will discover that it was wrong about Syrian Kurds, but could be late, as they discovered that they were wrong when they assisted Iraqi Saddam against Kurds.

by: Rojava Kurdistan

June 07, 2014 12:54 PM

It is good and clearly explained in your article How Kurds in Rojava are surrounded by Jihadist gangs and Assad brutal regime .The international community has not pay much attention to Kurds in Rojava.They have been silent to all atrocieties by Jihadist and killing of civilian people in Rojava.They will realize that the Kurds are only the hope of peaceful and democratic Syria.They can carry a leading role in peaceful solution.Hopefully.USA and the EU soon see that and open doors to Kurds in Rojava.The Kurds can not be left alone in Rojava fighting the common enemy of civilization.Everybody that feels belong to it is obliged to fight those radicals.

by: meanbill from: USA

June 07, 2014 11:57 AM

WHAT DO THEY WANT? -- Like the pro-Russian Ukrainians in Ukraine, (who must decide), if they want an autonomous state, independent state, or be a part of Russia, the Kurds must make that same decision? -- Sometimes you can sit and try to stay on a fence -- (BUT?) -- sooner or later, (they just have to decide), on what side of that fence they want to live on?

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